Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) Reviews

The entire development environment is accessed only through the virtual desktop setup using Citrix DaaS.

The most valuable feature of the solution is the desktop virtualization, which allows me to connect from anywhere. The solution's security feature provides a secure environment for the organization by preventing copying the content outside the virtual desktop.

The Citrix DaaS application is a bit heavy when it comes to mobile access, and it should function more smoothly. For example, the Citrix mobile app takes a long time to log in and should work even faster. Compared with the Outlook mobile app, the Citrix mobile app shows some lag in authentication.

I have been using Citrix DaaS for four to five years.

I rate the solution’s stability a nine out of ten.

Citrix DaaS is quite a scalable solution. We can quickly set up new desktops. With a simple configuration, we can create multiple instances and seamlessly give users access. Around 20 to 25 users use the tool in our organization, and we have plans to increase the usage.

I rate the solution ten out of ten for scalability.

I previously used VMware Horizon. I switched to Citrix DaaS because it seemed more secure.

The solution’s initial setup is very easy.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy, I rate the solution’s initial setup ten out of ten.

The solution has a fast deployment, and it can be deployed in less than ten minutes.

The tool provides a good return on investment because it reduces the maintenance of user hardware. We don't need powerful user hardware, like a powerful laptop; any simple laptop is enough to connect. We can add the required intra virtually to the virtual desktops so it gives the required performance.

We are using Citrix DaaS in the IT industry. The solution's security aspect has influenced our trust in using it for remote access. I would recommend Citrix DaaS to other users for its security and performance.

Overall, I rate Citrix DaaS a nine out of ten.

We use the product to give application access to external providers. It helps us publish remote desktops and applications.

Citrix DaaS’s most valuable feature is the virtualization of applications and desktops.

The product’s customization feature needs improvement.

We have been using Citrix DaaS for two years.

I rate the product’s stability an eight out of ten.

We have 400 Citrix DaaS users in our organization. We might increase its usage. I rate its scalability an eight out of ten.

The technical support services are good.

Positive

I rate the initial setup process a five out of ten. It is simple. However, you need to have some knowledge of how it works. It is a quality learning experience. It takes a few hours to complete for an advanced user. At the same time, it takes a day or two to study the process.

We recently received the product’s renewal quote, three times the last price. It is an expensive solution. I rate its pricing a nine out of ten.

I advise others to get training on how to use Citrix DaaS. It will help them understand the functionality before purchasing it. I rate it an eight out of ten.

The solution is primarily used for provisioning the desktop for the employees in the company, including different layers of employees. We have different groups using the PVS, the provisioning tool. We are provisioning different groups according to the level, according to the department, et cetera, to deliver a specific desktop for employees who are working at home.

The PVS technology itself, the provisioning, is great. It's very easy. It's very simple to alter the main image or the golden image. 

It's also very secure. 

I find Citrix is a stronger option in many other aspects since it's one of the most mature in the market. It's ancient and it's always developing itself to add new things. 

The initial setup is easy.

Scaling is straightforward. 

We have had issues with certain aspects, which is why we are looking for alternatives. For example, the firewall solution from Citrix is a bit complicated. Integration is hard. It needs a higher understanding of the network. It's not plug-and-play. When I deal with it, I always need assistance from the network team if I need to alter anything. It should be simpler to deal with. 

When I was doing comparison research, the thing that I found really interesting in Horizon is that the firewall setup is easy. It's like a wizard menu, and it's well-documented, so it's not hard to alter anything in the firewall. Maybe the feature that I want to be added to Citrix is well-written documentation and a wizard just to let me know what is going on in the firewall, how to edit things, and how to easily deploy something on the firewall. Do I initiate a rule or decline a rule? They just need to make it easier for me to troubleshoot firewall issues.

We're a company working for a certain customer and the customer has been working with the VDI since it started, so for a very long.

I've been working with it for a year.

The stability is pretty good and there are no real issues. The one concern is the firewall. If there's any error, U2 a firewall error, we were not able to easily modify it or easily solve it due to tissues with integration. You really need higher network knowledge. In the end, security issues or any issues on the firewall will affect the stability in the end. 

We are always adding new PVS machines. As an operator, we're always asked to add new PVS machines to batch them, update them, add new machines, and add new images. It has been very easy to scale and everything is a click away. There are no issues while scaling.

The organization is huge, so I cannot say exactly how many people are using the solution. The organization has around 750 servers. On each server, there may be hundreds of machines. There are lots of users. There are maybe tens of thousands of end users actually using the desktop as a service through Citrix.

We don't really deal with technical support. All errors that we face, we are able to detect ourselves as an operator. We don't open any tickets with Citrix support itself. We don't have any experience with the support that Citrix provides.

Since the start we were working on Citrix.

It is straightforward to set up and implement. 

I participated in editing something in the image itself or while provisioning. That said, the main deployment happened long ago, and we are operators, so we were not really in the middle of the actual process of the deployment. 

The errors that we had during maintenance are typically all due to the firewall and its networking of it. Other than that, things are smooth, and all the errors are detectable. If it's an error in configuration and any other aspects except, of course, the networking of the firewall, it may be difficult. Otherwise, for other aspects, everything is easy to maintain.

I'm the operator for a customer, so I'm not really aware of the licenses. They do the deal with Citrix and we just operate the infrastructure or the VDI. I don't really know how much it costs in reality.

I was comparing this product against Horizon. I wanted to compare both solutions in case we need to migrate from one solution to another.

The company wants to migrate to the cloud so that's why we are searching for an alternative - to see if we should replace Citrix or keep on working on Citrix.

We are working with Citrix VDI, and we are mainly working on the PTS for provisioning.

I'm a system integrator. I'm dealing with the latest version of the product.

It's a very well-known solution, and it's very efficient. However, you need to dig deep into the architecture of it just to understand it and grasp it well, especially how things are calling one another, how things are operating inside the APIs and all the networking inside, and how things are working in the architecture to be able to work with Citrix and actually understand everything that's going on it. 

If you face any error, you'll be able to know the cause and easily go to the root cause. However, you must first understand the architecture, understand how things are calling one another, and how the networks play. Then, start step-by-step working on it, on the application itself. If you have good knowledge, you'll find working with it very easy.

I'd rate the solution a seven out of ten based on the fact that we did rin into a lot of issues related to the firewall. Other than that, Citrix works fine. 

We were looking for a way to deliver the desktop to the end-user securely and within a short time. We leverage their cloud-hosted desktop virtualization.

We use Azure Cloud and, in terms of laptops, we give them to our employees but, because of the COVID situation, sometimes they work from home using their personal laptops to connect to the office environment. They use Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops as a medium.

Before we used the solution, when an employee would join our company it would take us between seven and 14 days to completely configure and give them a laptop. Now, within a maximum of one day they get their computer and can start working on that system. It has simplified things for us.

The solution also simplifies our adherence to industry regulations for data protection and for compliance. For data protection, we have watermarking enabled and the solution opens in full-screen mode so that end-users cannot toggle between VDA and their desktops. The solution also disables use of the clipboard to copy data from the VDA desktop to an endpoint device. Moreover, there is an option to disable even taking a screenshot of the virtual desktop. All of these features help with data protection.

For compliance, we have our own URL to access our desktop server. We can also create a tenant-based method for deploying the virtual desktop for each project, and we can group them. Also, the communication between the endpoint and the virtual desktop is encrypted end-to-end. All communication is over SSL and TLS connections.

The most valuable feature is the watermark because most of the time our employees connect from a remote location. In case they photograph the DDA or some data, the watermark will show which user did so and from which IP they connected. That makes it more secure.

The solution also provides us with flexibility so that it can be used on any device. We mostly have Mac and Windows machines.

In addition, Citrix uses its ICA (Independent Computing Architecture) protocol and for end-users with less bandwidth, the Citrix connectivity enables them to work.

They need to adapt more quickly to the latest additions to the Microsoft operating system. If Windows 10 comes out with a new version, there are compatibility issues and it takes them a lot of time to release an update.

Also, even though they support Linux, as with Windows, we are not able to use the latest version. They need to bring more simplicity to the Linux Virtual Desktop.

I've been using Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops for one year.

We don't have that many users, but the scalability is good. If required, there is no limit on the number of users. Currently, we have about 5,000 users on virtual desktops and about 1,000 are using Citrix.

In terms of support they are lagging. They take a lot of time to respond. Once they connect, they take a lot of time to resolve things, especially when moving things from L1 to L2 and L2 to L3. Their backend people keep on changing and it can be annoying for us. It is not that easy to get support. The support is not that great, although it has improved when compared to a year ago.

Neutral

Once we put it on a Cloud Connector, and if we are using a test cloud, it is very easy to deploy. If you want to deploy the ADC, then it takes some time to consider things, but otherwise deployment of Citrix consists of simple steps.

Because we are deployed in the cloud, it took us some time to configure the ADC. The rest of the components were deployed in a week's time, but the ADC took a lot of time, because there were a lot of compatibility issues. We followed the documentation, but it took some time for us to settle the configuration. The ADC is used to connect Citrix to the end-user system so it is a critical component. Deploying the ADC on the cloud is a complex process.

From the time we entered into an agreement to use Virtual Apps and Desktops, it took about six weeks to eight weeks until we could use it. On our end, there were two or three IT people involved.

The Citrix integrator we used was moderately helpful. They tried to help but they didn't have much experience with a cloud deployment. They were able to do on-prem fast, but GCP took them a lot of time.

Our deployment is in its initial stage so we cannot say there have been cost savings, but in terms of security, it is good. It has also improved the efficiency of our IT department by approximately 20 percent.

The pricing is a little bit high, but it's good value for the product's stability and efficiency.

You need to choose the right licensing, whether it is the Advanced or Premium Edition.

We have used Azure Virtual Desktop and some other solutions as well, but compared to all of them, in terms of the performance, the screen refresh, and security, Citrix is number-one.

Citrix is an enterprise leader for virtual desktops. We cannot compare Citrix options, usability, and simplicity with Azure Virtual Desktop. With Azure Virtual Desktop, there is a lot of slowness and audio will not work. When it comes to an enterprise-grade or first-class option, you need to look at Citrix.

You need to think about ADC. If you are planning a deployment in the cloud, you need to be well aware of what will work and what will not work with ADC. Otherwise, it will be difficult.

In the beginning, the Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops was designed for our COVID-19 business continuity plan. We use a lot of Citrix Desktops (for around 600 people). The desktop was built for out of office work, whitelisting clients, for all work done with a personal computer, and for the business continuity in a white room with dedicated computers. Today, we have changed the total design using enterprise laptops for everybody, so the desktop is gone and we only publish applications for end users.

The profile between the Citrix published applications and the broker profile on the laptop is permitted to use the same profile and the same settings for the user in Citrix and the laptop. It is a mix of both environments.

We are deployed in two parts: Belgium and Luxembourg. In Belgium, we have around 20 sessions concurrently, which are 100 percent deployed on-premise. In Luxemburg, we have around 400 sessions concurrently.

Today, we use only Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops. In the past, we also used Citrix Gateway to bring Citrix on a government forum or working with a personal computer, though this part is totally void today.

While we use it on-premise, we are using it more and more for cloud applications and infrastructure. Workers run applications on-prem to segregate correctly the access rights. All our tasks are on-premise, which is a positive for our security and the regulatory authority.

There was a scenario where a user built very small films for internal communication on his laptop via the VPN using the NAS file system. It's not the best solution. This takes around 45 minutes. With this use case, we installed all the tools on Citrix. Now, the user can build his film in a maximum of two minutes. It was an incredible improvement for the user. Today, this is the best case of Citrix usage for end user experience, using the full capabilities of the server in the data center.

Our organization supports Zero Trust as a security strategy. However, the Zero Trust strategy in the bank is done via the VPN. Also, all laptops connected out of the bank are via VPN. We don't use the full Citrix landscape to do this today.

For all applications in the bank, we set up Active Directory groups to have access rights. All users can access a lot of applications, but the rights are given one by one for each application. Therefore, it's very centralized at the Active Directory level.

The business continuity plan was 100 percent based on Citrix and the client. Today, it is a little different because everybody has a laptop, but the main applications are still available on Citrix. This offers the more flexible possibilities of managing business continuity plans and performance everywhere for end users.

In Luxembourg, a user can use business applications with Citrix inside the building. Then, outside the building, that user cannot use the business applications because we cut the usage of Citrix.

We can provide tons of applications with different settings, behaviors, and operating systems. It is the same way for the user. Then, we are totally transparent for the user to use a lot of totally different applications, which is the most important part of Citrix today.

Remotely, the user can use his personal computer with a VPN to the bank, as there is not always WiFi. We have seen very low boundaries in some cases. With the Citrix application, we provide very beautiful applications. We are running without a lot of resources in the data center and the user doesn't see it. It's totally transparent for them.

In the bank, a major part of all our applications is Microsoft App-V. If App-V is at end of life, then we need a new technology to replace it. As of today, I haven't seen in Citrix Studio that there is a new technology embedded directly in it to replace App-V.

We have been using Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops for more than 10 years. We started with a full complement of Citrix features, but today we only use a small portion of it. This changed over the years. 

The stability of the solution is great. It is not evident to me whether the lack of stability is linked with the new data center, due to a Citrix issue or new component in the new data center. However, in the past, Citrix was very stable. 

In the beginning, we had more than 70 users with only one reboot per week. I have heard that some companies rebooted every day at night. For us, that was not mandatory. The solution has been very stable with the condition that our applications are packaged correctly.

We plan to migrate to the latest LTSR version next year.

The scalability of Citrix is incredible because we use the Provisioning Services (PVS) solution. With this technology, the same image can be streamed to all servers. With this technology, I don't need to install, reinstall, nor repackage it. 

Globally, we have 600 to 700 users with Citrix access in the company. Their roles of Citrix users are private banker, operations, and sales. 

There is not so much support because the solution is very stable. However, we use Citrix ShareFile, and for this, all calls are solved within five hours. Citrix is very good for our usage today, and we haven't had a big issue.

We have been using Citrix for a long time. Building and first implementing Citrix was a little complex. We have a lot of components. However, when you manage all of them correctly, then it's easy. 

The first time, it was a little complicated to build the first images. Today, with versions, this is easy. We built a new image in four hours, which is incredible. Over time, we have improved the function and management of Citrix.

Implementation in the bank was in three steps: 

1. We implemented it in a test environment, like a beta environment, with a beta tester and system engineer to improve the solution and application, then checked everything was working. 
2. In the acceptance environment, we set up all the same settings as production. We asked key users to validate everything: applications and behaviors. 
3. We copied-pasted this environment (if everything was okay) into production for end users and key users. It had totally the same environment with the same behavior. Then, we validated all the environments from acceptance to production directly on the same Citrix environment. 

Acceptance and production are only one big environment where acceptance and production workers cohabit in separate tools and where all users can go into the acceptance or production environments by default. When we validate a new disk or function in a new application, we go to acceptance with just an Active Directory group to validate the solution. This is really great.

In the beginning, we used a partner as an integrator to help us design the Citrix and implement the first part. We have been using a partner for maintenance and upgrades because we don't have the knowledge at this moment about the newest version of Citrix. 

As partners, we used Acidos to build our first version, then we used SecureLink. However, I don't think the Citrix partner aspect of SecureLink's company exists anymore.

We deployed the first bit with our partner. We did this with seven or eight system engineers to build and go through tests. That was the first version. Today, for Belgium and Luxembourg, we have only three system engineers to maintain and publish new applications.

With Citrix, we saved a lot in the past for the business continuity plan. Today, it is not so much, but we still make money because the performance is there.

If you look at cost, then you must look at the number of users that you are covering. If you are only using it for some users, then it is very expensive. However, if you have a massive amount of users, then it begins to be interesting to use Citrix. Because once you are managing thousands of servers with one guy, your maintenance costs decrease per user.

Another major cost is Microsoft because Microsoft Windows costs them. We also need a license for SQL server, Windows Server, and Citrix Remote PC. These are extra costs for the solution that are not covered by the license.

We haven't evaluated similar solutions. We don't have any other solutions for replacing the Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktop. Therefore, I think we will stay with Citrix for a long time.

We use other tools for analysis, not the Citrix tools and analytics. We don't use the Citrix tools because all our firewalls are not Citrix Firewalls.

All our detection and monitoring are not done via the Citrix environment because we have other tools for that.

There has been a lot of improvement in the application. We use the application for so many different things and areas of security. It is incredible what we can do with Citrix. It provides total transparency for us.

Today, it does not provide the flexibility of being used on any device because we use it on enterprise laptops. However, in the past, users could use their personal computer. It covered a lot of models and brands, and it was totally transparent for us. We only asked, "Please install Citrix receivers," then the rest is transparent for the system engineer. 

It is not clear for this moment if we will increase the usage of Citrix, because we don't know where the user will be working going forward (at the office, home, or another country).

I would rate it an eight out of 10. It's not only Virtual Apps and Desktops. Also, other products that I see from Citrix on the market are good. They look for the best performance solution for the end user.

If you have a desktop, laptop, or device that can be distributed to end users, to any kind of inconsistency in the institution, we deploy the solution so that anybody can get whatever resource is required. It helps ensure access. It makes it easy for us to give storage, memory, RAM, or processor resources without anything affecting their day-to-day activity. It makes it simple and easy for our institution to provide the kind of activity to the users.

The product is ideal for sharing an application for different resources. For instance, let's say we have a Microsoft Office product and want to share the Microsoft Office product with everyone simultaneously. That can easily be done. 

With this product, everyone can have a similar kind of desktop environment. So it's a virtual environment, the desktop environment. They can do whatever they need in that environment, and different kinds of users can access different kinds of applications. 

The product is scalable. 

If there are connectivity issues, there are stability issues. 

I've been using the solution for one year.

The solution is stable and reliable. However, it depends on the network infrastructure. If we have a stable network infrastructure, then it's stable. That said, if the infrastructure is not stable, I don't recommend this product. If there is an interruption, it might not actually be available to the user, which could cause issues.

The solution is scalable. 

Right now, we have 1,100 virtual workspaces, and we are planning to add 1,500 more. 

We do not use a different type of service right now. 

In terms of handling the setup process, we need planning since it is a bit complex. We need to know the infrastructure itself. The hardware resources can also be a bit expensive, and the licensing might also depend on the number of users that the organization has. Therefore, it is a bit expensive, the initial deployment. The cost of RAM after the deployment is much less.

It needs a proper professional to deploy everything. It also requires the engagement of Citrix. Three to six months is enough to deploy it as the hardware might first actually need to be available. Still, once you have that resource, deploying Citrix also might take additional time.

While internally, it can be managed by an in-house staff, the deployment cannot. It requires proper capacity building to do even the deployment. It is a little bit challenging, so I recommend the setup be done by the consultant. 

The initial setup requires a specific supplier or consultant to handle everything. It can't be done in-house.

In January 2020 they changed the licensing scheme and they're also changing the on-prem licensing scheme to be subscription-based as well. It can be tricky. I don't know why they did that. Maybe it's the marketing strategy. I don't know. The subscription is for three years or five years. If you procure three years subscription, you can use the license, after three years, they'll block it, which can be a challenge if you aren't paying attention to when licensing renewals are due. 

We last updated about a year ago. We are on the 2021 version.

I recommend the solution, however, it depends on the organization's use case. Let's say if that organization needs to share the resource equally through the users or staff they have, then I recommend it. 

I'd rate it nine out of ten.

I have been using this solution for quite a long time. We have seen it evolve over the years. We primarily use this solution for virtual desktops and virtual applications.

We use the entire Citrix Suite. This XenDesktop solution helps with applications or desktops. It tunnels data into the system and the internal network. Employees can access the network anywhere. They can save files, print files, and access the network from home or the office in a secure environment.

We are looking for speed and agility in an environment. We want to see that the SAN storage can be policed and can detect a network latency. 

It is pretty stable. We have five of us on staff to maintain the stability of the environment of the solution. 

It is scalable. We have about a hundred desktops and we have about 1,100 people that access it externally.

The tech support is pretty good. My only complaint is that if you are calling in a ticket, you need to know who is answering the call. The overseas support is more delayed. If you ask for a US representative, they are quicker to respond to the ticket. 

The setup was easy due to our extensive use of Citrix products. If a rookie was installing it, I would suggest looking at the website and the Citrix whitepapers.  

Our deployment took about a year because we wanted to vet it correctly. The vetting process took about four and a half months to deal with the bugs. We slowly ramped the system up into a working phase. This was to ease our network into the system without a lot of issues. Our test users really helped iron out the issues before deployment.

The ROI for us has been that when we had Hurricane Harvey last year, XenDesktop came in very handy for us. Even though people had electricity in Texas, many networks were down. Our offices could still get into our network and do work that was needed. It is an excellent virtual office that works anywhere, anytime, and anyplace. It is worth our investment.

It is quite expensive, but so are the competitors on the market but, you get what you pay for.

We looked at VMware Horizon View which compliments nicely with VMware products. Since our team was all familiar with Citrix it made the most sense. It makes our job much easier to use a product our team understands and has prior experience using.

My advice is to really vet the system a bit before choosing a solution. Always make sure you have a budget for it.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• Does the solution work well in your lab?
• Does it work well in your office?
• Do you have a good network infrastructure? 
• Will it support your needs?

The Citrix Workspace is a little easier compared to Citrix Receiver. We used to use Citrix Receiver and then switched to Citrix Workspace. Previously, we had to install five browser components and a couple more things to launch these applications.

Six to seven months after we started using this solution, we had an issue when we were using the Citrix server. We needed to install the Citrix Runtime in the server where the application was hosted. When we installed the Runtime, we needed to restart the production server. So, whenever our EMR application was going live, we had to plan to upgrade all our other surrounding tools and applications, so we could complete one restart and achieve everything at once.

The engineering team installed certain things to fix the issue, and now it is resolved. There are so many links within the Citrix application, so when we tried to launch it, we initially used IE. Initially, we never had an issue, but when we made Chrome an enterprise browser, then we were facing some slowness. But later, we realized that it was not a Citrix issue, it was some additional components of the browser that we needed to install so that it would be rightly redirected to the EFC.

We have been using this solution for ten years from a configuration perspective and almost three years from an automation perspective. We are using the latest version.

We are planning our next upgrade around mid-September. The solution is deployed on-premises.

It is a stable solution.

We have more than 500 people using this solution.

We have not used the technical support from Citrix. However, we reach out to our technical team for any issues.

I rate the pricing a five out of five because it is a good price.

I rate this solution a nine out of ten. We have been using this solution for a long time and are comfortable using Citrix.